German Patent No. DE 33 10 477 describes a controller designed in circuitboard technology as part of a control system in a vehicle. Such a controller is usually accommodated in the passenger compartment or the radiator tank behind the splashboard that seals off the engine compartment of a vehicle, so it is protected from the rough operating conditions in the vehicle's engine compartment.
The controller has a plug connector as a connector socket mounted in an opening in a housing of the controller and includes a plurality of contact elements in rows. The contact elements are connected to electric components on the circuitboard of the controller and can be connected to mating contact elements of a cable harness plug, over which all the input and output signals of the controller are carried.
A plurality of cables, initially bundled as a cable harness, lead away from the cable harness plug to sensors and actuators mounted on the vehicle's internal combustion engine but also, at least indirectly, leading to other electric components accommodated elsewhere in the vehicle, such as light fixtures in the marginal areas of the vehicle or display instruments in the dashboard.
To avoid making the cable harness unwieldy, only groups of components arranged together are connected directly to it, while the connection to individual components is indirect by way of adapters and attached extension cables.
In addition, cables of the cable harness over which high currents flow, e.g., the operating currents of actuators, are not carried through the controller but instead there are splices on the respective cables where these cables branch off. The branches are combined in a disconnector socket from which they ultimately lead to the respective components.
This conventional disclosed embodiment of the control system with a controller having such a design and the respective connector arrangement has the disadvantage of being cost-intensive to manufacture and assemble and susceptible to faults due to the additional contact points because of the use of adapter plugs and the disconnector socket. In addition, changes in the connector arrangement when changes occur in the installation conditions of the electric components in the vehicle can only be made at great expense.